Ramesses I (Egypt)

Ramesses I was a career military officer of non-royal birth who rose to vizier and commander under Horemheb, the last pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Horemheb died without an heir and named him successor, making Ramesses I the founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty — the line that would include Seti I and Ramesses II. His own reign lasted barely two years and he built little; his significance is dynastic rather than personal. The family he founded ruled Egypt during the period most often connected to the Exodus traditions and to Egyptian control of Canaan, and it was his grandson Ramesses II whose long reign and building projects gave the name its later associations.